Aquisition of Geophysical Field Equipment for Earth Science Research and Teaching at the University of Alabama

University Of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa AL

Investigators

Abstract

0216520 Harry With support from this Major Research Instrumentation grant, the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama will purchase geophysical field equipment to facilitate research and teaching activities associated with our department's emphasis on Natural Resource Exploration, Conservation, and Remediation. Equipment to be purchased includes a ground penetrating radar system, potential field surveying equipment, a sediment coring system, and equipment to support high-resolution marine seismic surveys. Combined with existing land and marine seismic surveying systems, shallow coring facilities, and state-of-the-art Earth Imaging Computational Facility, the requested equipment will establish a robust facility for acquisition and analysis of geophysical data needed to support continued growth in a wide variety of research and teaching activities at UA. The equipment will create an environment conducive to interdisciplinary research that is ideally suited to the faculty in the department, and should greatly expand intra- and extramural collaborative research and teaching activities and efforts to provide service to state and local communities. Specific plans for use of the equipment include NSF, DOE, and privately funded research initiatives in coastal processes, groundwater flow and contaminant transport, fossil fuel resources, sedimentary basin analysis, and tectonics. Examples of such projects that will make use of the equipment in the immediate future include: (1) shallow geophysical imaging of the aquifer at the Macrodispersion Experiment (MADE) test site in Columbus Mississippi, with the goal of developing a stratigraphic context for hydrologic conductivity models used for contaminant transport modeling; (2) potential field surveying of the Black Warrior Basin and adjacent Appalachian and Ouachita Fold and Thrust belts, with the goal of determining the relationship between basin subsidence and orogenic tectonics; and (3) integrated geophysical and sedimentological studies of coastal systems with the goal of constraining the timing and physical processes of environment formation. ***